Dumbo

The idea of doing a live action remake of Disney's Dumbo must have been like catnip to a filmmaker like Tim Burton.  After all, the story pretty much contains most of his favorite elements.  There's a sad, misunderstood hero at the center of it all who is shunned by the rest of the world, a majority of the cast is made up of circus people, and there's kind of a bizarre off-kilter whimsy to everything.  At times, the movie plays like a love letter to everything Burton believes in, and he has fully embraced it, giving us one of his more visually beautiful films he has done in a very long time.

Burton has always excelled at being a visual storyteller, and he gives us a film that is rich in glorious colors, production design (provided by Rick Heinrichs), costumes (Colleen Atwood), and visual effects.  This modern day take on the 1941 animated classic has all the visual splendor, atmosphere and technical wizardry you could hope for.  That's why it's so disappointing that the foundation all of this mastery is built upon, the script credited to Ehren Kruger, is so flimsy.  This is a movie that is filled with glorious sights, but there's nothing underneath.  Oh, the movie does have a big heart at the center of it all.  This is the most sentimental Burton has gotten since he made Big Fish.  But, the characters who inhabit this visually rich world just don't stack up.  Even little Dumbo himself, adorable of an elephant as he might be, just never comes across as that captivating of a screen presence, because he often feels like a co-star in his own self-titled feature.

Rather than the story being told from the point of view of the sweet, floppy-eared elephant who is gifted with the ability of flight, we get the story of Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), and his two young children, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins).  They befriend little Dumbo, teach him to be the best he can be, and eventually make him a star at a circus.  They also all get their own backstory, which takes up most of the film's nearly two hour run time. (The original cartoon barely ran 60 minutes, and probably needed to be fleshed out, but not like this.) Holt, we learn, worked with the horses at a traveling circus until he was called away to fight in World War I.  Now he's back, missing an arm, to find his children waiting for him, and his wife gone after a bout with an illness.  Holt struggles to find his place in the circus, and is put in charge of taking care of the elephants by the ringmaster, Max (an energetic Danny DeVito).  This is how his children and him are introduced to little Dumbo, and take care of him when everyone else initially rejects him because of his oversized ears.

Little Milly and Joe are the first to bond with the elephant, and learn his secret ability to fly.  The kids are largely the stars of most of the film, and this would be fine, if the kids didn't come across as being so wooden.  I really don't like criticizing child actors, as I don't want to be mean, but I just did not buy these performances.  As Milly, young Nico Parker seems to speak in the same tone of voice, no matter what might be happening, and seldom seems invested.  As for Joe, little Mr. Hobbins is given little to do by the script, other than to point out the obvious.  When they discover what Dumbo can do, they build an act around it, which catches the media's attention.  This brings the villain into the story, a big city circus producer named V.A. Vandermere (Michael Keaton), who sees Dumbo as his road to fame, and wants to ship the elephant's mom off to be slaughtered.

Keaton is appropriately oily and hateful in his portrayal, but again, the script gives him little to do outside of overacting.  There is no real motivation to his character as a villain.  He is simply mean because that is his part in the story.  Same goes for everyone else.  Nobody gets to be developed outside of the role they get to play.  We have Eva Green as a French aerialist who befriends Dumbo and eventually begins to fall for Holt and his children, although she never really is given much of a reason to.  We have the entire crew of the circus, which include clowns, strongmen, side show attractions, and the like.  They're there mostly to react to what's going on, and engage in a daring rescue mission during the third act.  This is one of those movies that features a large cast, but nobody gets to make much of an impression.

Dumbo, for all of its visual strength, does not have much of a story to tell.  In expanding upon the simple plot of the animated film, Kruger seems to be at a loss.  He does his very best, even throwing in an action-heavy climax involving Dumbo soaring to the rescue to save the children from a burning building.  But, the whole thing is running on empty.  I remember the sights and visuals that Burton and his cinematography team have given us, but I'll be willing to bet I'll have forgotten most of the people who inhabited them in a few weeks.  This clearly wants to be a big-hearted movie about outsiders finding their place and banding together, but it simply doesn't have enough emotion to truly come to life.  The heart is there, but the banal writing fails to kick it into motion.

Burton has always been one of those filmmakers who really needs a strong script to go with his visuals.  Otherwise, you're just admiring the technical credits, and nothing else.  Sadly, this is another one of those cases.  I don't regret seeing the movie, as it's filled with sights I won't soon forget.  I just wish it got to have a few more rewrites to flesh out the characters before Burton got to put his trademark style on the project.

0 comments